From farming to raiding, I don't think theres a single facet of the game that doesn't have an add-on to 'tune it'...

Quite simply, my question is - Do Blizzard have to take into account add-ons when they develop areas of the game?

For example, are Raids going to become impossible without that add-on because Blizzard are having to compensate for the 'helping hand' the add-on gives you?

I'm already hearing ppl say healing raids without a certain add-on is nearly impossible?! Whether this is true or not I don't know; I'm no healer.

This doesn't seem fair to me - not everyone uses, or wants to, use them; be they purist or do not want a drop in pc performance.

Also, If it is the case that Blizzard take them into account, were left in the hands of third party developers that produce and maintain these programs; they're under no obligation to keep them functioning properly.

I won’t deny that some add-ons can make certain encounters easier than they were planned to be, that’s why we are always keeping an eye on what’s out there in the add-on jungle and modify the add-on API any time we feel it’s necessary.We’ve done so in the past regarding add-on and macro functionality, for example, one obvious add-on comes to mind: AVR, this one made certain encounters so trivial that we obviously had to restrict the API functionality.

So in short, no, encounters are designed so that players without any add-ons can still defeat every single boss in the hardest difficulty mode. Can add-ons make certain encounters a bit easier? Sure, not much though, in the past that could be the case but nowadays, even add-ons that give out boss warnings are not as important as they used to be since most encounters have them already built into the game, it can be in the form of a shout from a boss, a visual effect, a chat warning or just a sound, so you won’t feel much of a difference nowadays when raiding if you’re paying attention to those details.

Regarding healing and raid frames, players have a tendency to stick to what they’re used to (if it works don’t change it), and so a lot of players are still using raid frames from add-ons even though the game itself already has some really good ones. I think it’s fair to say that nowadays the use of add-ons is at a place where it just gets down to personal preference and needs.

I do use quite a few add-ons, I love being able to customize my interface, my raid frames, my buttons, and show boss warnings the way I want them to be shown, I understand that giving add-ons this kind of “power” comes with certain risks, but in the end I believe the gameplay experience is highly enhanced because of the freedom of choice that the add-ons provide.

Also, great add-ons of a tendency to show us awesome ideas that we can use in the standalone game, because of them, I believe the WoW of today is a much better game without add-ons than it would be if we had never allowed add-ons to exist in the first place.Also keep in mind that WoW is in a state of constant evolution and all the functionalities, including everything interface related is always getting better and better, add-ons are a great addition to the game and we’re not in competition with them but are instead in a very deep cooperation, and occasionally they do show us something that most players would enjoy, when that happens we try to add it to the game in our own way.

But the talented people who can write addons don't have time to deal with all the hosting stuff and the administrative work to publish and update their work.

I think this is a really nice idea and in my personal opinion it would be awesome to have for both the players and the developers, but for now there aren't any plans for this and as you might imagine, our devs are all extremely busy with MoP, and will continue to be so for quite some time, since this expansion brings more diversity and endgame content than any other we’ve launched in the past.

One thing comes to mind though, we always strive to provide the safest, easiest and most trustworthy environment possible for our players, and managing such a database of third party software would require a huge amount of quality control on our side to have it under "Blizzard quality", so it doesn’t seem that feasible to me under this terms. You can claim it wouldn’t be any different than what it is right now but actually it would be because if we had such a system put in place, we would for sure have a lot more players using add-ons than we have today, since it would be integrated and thus much more accessible for players that previously didn’t feel comfortable enough using or installing add-ons from external sites.

We like players to trust anything with the Blizzard name on it, so we prefer to do it ourselves, if there’s anything great that you think we should add to the game, any great idea that might have come from an add-on or any other place, send us an email, post on the forums, we’re constantly updating WoW’s interface and will continue to do so throughout every future patch or expansion and we hope to keep improving it without ever competing with add-ons, they have their purpose and their niche, and so does the in-game default interface.